Research at WASP

University of Hawaii
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/

The goal of the project was to ascertain what size objects in a geo-synchronous orbit around the Earth (23,000 miles above the Earth's surface) could be detected using existing large-aperture (~ 6.5 m) ground-based telescopes equipped with adaptive optics. In order to obtain the best signal-to-noise ration possible from the image restoration techniques, we needed to simultaneously process thousands of images. Such a task is simply not feasible/practical without the resources of a machine such as the CRAY XT-3. Our preliminary results suggest that we may be able to detect objects that have dimensions of ~ 30 cm x 30 cm x 30 cm or bigger. This is the typical size for a nano-satellite.